Pale Fire
by Vladimir Nabokov · first published 1945
51% recommend43% neutral6% critical
Why HN recommends it
Puzzle-box novel built from a long poem and a colleague's obsessive, unreliable footnotes and index. Praised for its language, humor, tragedy and rereadability; suits patient readers who like dense, playful structure.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
A 999 line poem in heroic couplets, divided into 4 cantos, was composed--according to Nabokov's fiction--by John Francis Shade, an obsessively methodical man, during the last 20 days of his life.
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Pale Fire, by Nabokov. A story of insane obsession, which I'm sure many HN readers could relate to...
on “Ask HN: Interesting (Non software) books?” ↗…could be the fantasy of the 30 year old and you can use it to explore the mind of a pedophile. Also, reading this of course Lolita comes to mind. To this day, one of the best books I have read (although Pale Fire is the more literarily impressive one of Nabokov). Lolita is an example of a book that explores a complex controversial topic, with an unreliable narrator which forces the reader to think about what is…
on “Australian author's erotic novel is child sex abuse material, judge finds” ↗…between describing a movie in perfect detail to Nabokov and then being hired to review movies. It's not a million miles away from the sort of gaff Charles Kinbote might make [1]. Incidentally, I think Pale Fire might appeal to much of the HN crowd. It's frequently read as a dense, finely-wrought mechanical puzzle that might appeal to the coder mindset. Like Nabokov, I'm also a big fan of writing under pseudonyms.…
on “An A from Nabokov” ↗…from the caveman to Keats. What if we awake one day, all of us, and find ourselves utterly unable to read? I wish you to gasp not only at what you read, but at the miracle of it's being readable." - Pale Fire
on “Vladimir Nabokov, Literary Refugee” ↗* Anne Tyler, Dinner At The Homesick Restaurant * Gene Wolfe, Peace * Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire
on “Ask HN: Best book you read in 2011” ↗Favorite Technical: The Pragmatic Programmer. This is something that I should have read much earlier. Favorite Fiction: Pale Fire. Just pure astonishment. Left me speechless with how he made the language sing. Also great (in no particular order): - The Sewing Girl's Tale (non-fiction) - The Odyssey (poem) - Tropic of Cancer…
on “Ask HN: What is the best thing you read in 2022?” ↗Pale Fire by Vladimir Nobokov. Superb meta-literature.
on “Ask HN: Best book you read in 2010 and briefly why” ↗As much as I enjoyed both Pale Fire and Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle, I cannot, in good conscience, let these be the only Nabokov books to be mentioned here. Having read all his nonfiction and his autobiography over the past three…
on “Ask HN: Interesting (Non software) books?” ↗Some favorites: Pale Fire by Nabokov Ulysses by Joyce Et Tu, Babe by Leyner Metamorphosis by Kafka (more a long story) Things Fall Apart by Achebe Hamlet and Coriolanus by Shakespeare The Code of the Woosters by Wodehouse…
on “Ask HN: What is the best fiction book you've ever read? ” ↗I will take this opportunity, as I take even more tenuous ones, to pimp Mary McCarthy's review of Pale Fire (my favorite book), which is an act of the creative spirit almost as stunning as Nabokov's original: http://innerlea.com/aulit/paleFire/notes/mccarthy.html
on “Three Weeks Before Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, There Was Dorothy Parker's” ↗"I was the shadow of the waxwing slain/By the false azure of the windowpane." Pale Fire really is a joyous tour de force, and it prefigured much of modern literature -- DFW's endless use of footnotes has its source in Nabakov's loopily self-referential novel, and it's probably, despite its…
on “Nabokov’s ‘great gay comic novel’” ↗This was a fascinating read. Thank you for sharing. Makes me want to read Pale Fire. As an aside, i learnt from reading this that his name is Nabokov, not Nabakov!
on “The radical power of the book index” ↗For a fictional analogue to this lovely book, check out Pale Fire by Nabokov. The book begins as ostensibly a long poem but slowly unravels itself in the index and end notes
on “A smart, playful book about the underappreciated index” ↗I certainly agree that Lolita is the best work of Nabokov. For _Pale Fire_, it's a weird narrative, and I think for the first read, linearly going through the book, first the poem, and then just enjoying the story in the commentary is the easiest way to go. Think of it as a…
on “Ask HN: What is the best thing you read in 2022?” ↗C21 fiction - The Wolf Hall trilogy, Hillary Mantell; by some margin the best prose I’ve seen this century. C20 fiction - Pale Fire, Nabokov, a book to return to; Pop science - Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman, a book that radically changed the way I think The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins, ditto Philosophy - Tractatus LogicoPhilosophicus…
on “Ask HN: What are your top 5 favorite books of all time?” ↗